That One Attack: Difference between revisions

If you have a party, it will almost always target all party members, and it often takes off the majority of your hit points, if not [[One-Hit Kill|worse]]. It's a staple for [[That One Boss]] to have one of these, possibly more.

 

 

[[Skill Gate Characters]] may also derive their harmful-to-newbies nature from having one of these, and thus falter when the opponent learns to counter it. If these are available to players without suffering [[Redemption Demotion]], they usually become [[Game Breaker|Game Breakers]].

** [[Bonus Boss|Culex]] and his elemental crystals have nothing but stupid-powerful attacks (like the aforementioned Water Blast), but none of them compete with his one physical attack. He doesn't even move to attack you, all that happens is you instantly hear a slash and one of your characters takes about 150 damage at a respectable level (for comparison, all of your characters are barely below 200 HP, and most of the magic attacks will only deal 50-70 at that point). And because of its unpredictability, it's pretty much impossible to block unless you instantly press A as soon as it's his turn to move. Even when you [[Game Breaker|put the Lazy Shell on the Princess]], which lets her take little to no damage from every attack in the fight, this attack will still deal about 50 to her. It's ridiculous.

*** Don't forget his Dark Star special, as well, which is armor-piercing and can pose a serious threat even to a Lazy-Shell-equipped Toadstool. At least it's only single-target.

** Masa and Mune's combined form has an attack, signaled by the message "Storing Tornado Energy." and two turns later "Pain...", that does over 100 HP in damage and targets the entire party. At the time you face them, it will most likely knock your characters into the low double-digits and force you to waste a turn healing them. Even worse, the [[Guide Dang It|single obscure hint given by a random NPC that tells you how to stop the attack]] was mistranslated into uselessness in the original SNES release of the game. {{spoiler|Attack Masa&Mune with Crono's Wind Slash attack (mistranslated as Slash in the SNES version) while he's charging the attack, and it'll dissipate the "Tornado Energy". Problem being that the man in the SNES version talks about you using Slash on Energy Whirls, whatever those are}}.

** Magus risks casting a spell! (Signals that he's about to cast Dark Matter, his most powerful spell)

* Thresher maws in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' continually burrow into the ground and reappear somewhere else. That "somewhere else" can be ''directly under you.'' Instant game over. That isn't even getting into its ''actual'' attack, spitting out acid which completely ignores your shields and take off more than half of the [[Cool Tank|Mako's]] hit points (if you're fighting on foot, the acid attack is very likely to insta-kill). The general strategy people recommend for thresher maws is "run the hell away."

** In ''[[Mass Effect 2]]'' there are a ''lot'' more examples of this trope. There are the [[Demonic Spiders|Scions]], whose Shockwaves tear your shields to pieces and ignore cover. There are the [[That One Boss|Praetorians]], whose Death Choir attack decimates anyone within blast range and fully recharges their Barrier. There's the Oculi, whose energy beams stagger you and deal massive damage. There's [[People Puppets|Harbinger himself]], who's fond of using a Singularity attack that knocks you out of cover so he can bombard you with Warp blasts. And finally, there's the {{spoiler|Human-Reaper}}, who only has one attack but needs no other, which is an energy beam fired from the mouth that devastates your shields and prevents them from recharging for a brief period of time.

** The bosses of Mount Hyjal seem to have this fairly often. Rage Winterchill, the firt boss, has a Death and Decay that does 15% of each victim's ''maximum'' health per tick. Azgalor has an attack that targets a player every 45 seconds and kills them after a 20 second debuff expires. Archimonde can fling players into the air with Air Burst, and they must know how to use the Tears of the Goddess correctly, or they will fall to their deaths.

*** Because of multiple That One Attacks coupled with his status as [[That One Boss]], Archimonde was considered unfarmable by some servers, even after he was nerfed for ''Wrath of the Lich King''.

* ''[[Dead or Alive]] 4''. Alpha-152. Okay, got her... GOT HER... NO! That stupid attack where she grabs you, knocks you down, then smacks you across the face a few times which removes 70% or so of your health! Resist... urge... to... toss... 360... out... window.

* [[Blaz Blue|Ragna The Bloodedge]] has a [[Awesome but Impractical]] attack called "Devoured By Darkness" which is unblockable and damaging, but balanced by a requiring a lot of Ragna's super meter, having to go into his [[Deadly Upgrade]] Blood Kain state to use it, losing said [[Super Mode]] after an (attempted) use and being a close-range grab. Any semblance of balance goes out the window for his [[True Final Boss]] form ''Unlimited Ragna'', who can use Devoured By Darkness nearly at-will to blow away 70% of your health and massively heal himself. [[It Got Worse|Also]], it doesn't remove Unlimited Ragna's Blood Kain.

** No listing of 1-hit and 2-hit kills can be complete without the Genesic Emerald Tager Buster. This about sums it up:

{{quote| '''Tager''': [[Calling Your Attacks|Any last words?]] [[This Is Sparta|This is going to be! Your end!]]<br />

** We cannot talk about this without mentioning the guitar solo from "Constant Motion". The first half is fairly easy. Then you get hit with the practically random strings of notes followed by a bunch of 23-note-per-second triplets. Eagh.

** One of many keyboard charts with this is Roundabout by Yes. The whole thing is hard, but where does the shit really hit the fan? Why, in [[Subdued Section]] of course!

** One rather popular song in particular, Jack-The-Ripper, has two: the [http://youtu.be/2LjRxSR9FWs?t=1m2s stream going to the guitar] and [http://youtu.be/2LjRxSR9FWs?t=1m42s this 30-second hell.]

* Many of the bits from [[Bit Trip]] qualify, but some of the worst are the bits that change back and forth from black to white from ''Void''. If you don't get the timing down quickly, you will lose points both from missing black bits and collecting white bits, and you will fail ridiculously fast.

* [[Jet Force Gemini]]'s second fight with Mizar has the infamous "electric jump rope". It's probably 80% of the reason the Mizar rematch is [[That One Boss|hair-pullingly tough to fight.]]

* In ''[[Prototype (Video Game)|Prototype]]'', {{spoiler|the Supreme Hunter}} can use the same tendril barrage you can, and it inflicts a terrifying amount of damage. Furthermore, depending on how chaotic the fight is, noticing the move being prepared can be extremely difficult, and there's no getting out of the way once it's been unleashed on you.

* In ''[[Castlevania Order of Ecclesia]]'', Dracula throws long streams of bats that bypass [[Mercy Invincibility]] and will shred your HP down to nothing in seconds if you get caught off guard. If you can avoid that, then it'll be the bloody soul steals out of nowhere, which do a lot to you and give him a bit more health back. [[Portrait of Ruin]]'s bosses normally have a single attack that is much more difficult to work against than the others too.

* In ''[[Mega Man X|Mega Man X5]]'', the fight with Zero has him throwing nearly-full-screen [[Sword Beam|Sword Beams]] that you have to dodge in sequence. Capcom acknowledged this by making this attack Zero's Level 3 Hyper Combo in ''[[Marvel vs. Capcom 3 (Video Game)|Marvel vs. Capcom 3]]''.

** Hell Lusts from ''3'' have an uppercut attack. Admittedly it isn't ''too'' powerful, but it has ridiculous priority<ref>How ridiculous? Death won't stop a Lust getting the move off.</ref>, the demons love to use it while you're busy fighting others and they sometimes feint it by just doing the starting dash without actually striking, meaning prediction is difficult. [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pItTKI43P5o Behold] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j91mP3UtaBQ the] [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBdKLPouoOw horror].

* [[Mirror Boss|Bunji]] [[That One Boss|Kugashira]] in the original ''[[Gungrave]]'': "See Ya"/"Not So Fast!" Kicks Grave in the stomach --> shoots Grave while airborne = instant shield break and knocks off 25% of Grave's HP. This attack can KO you should the boss spam it (and he will). The fight even starts off with the boss using it, and it's ''very'' hard to avoid or see coming. It doesn't help that he's the only boss in the game that can ''heal''.

* In the ''[[Monster Hunter (Video Game)|Monster Hunter]]'' franchise, the ''most'' agreed upon [[That One Attack]] is Plesioth's Hip-check. [[Hitbox Dissonance|The hitbox for the attack is so broken that you could be standing close to it, on the opposite side of the attack's direction, not touching the Plesioth's body, and]] ''[[Hitbox Dissonance|still get hit]]''. It doesn't help that it's one of its only four viable melee attacks while on land.

* In ''[[The Legend of Zelda Majoras Mask]]'', Gyorg has the habit of slallowing you temporarily after you inflict it damage. This attack is also very difficult to dodge.

** Phytops from ''[[The Legend of Zelda Spirit Tracks]]'' prolongs gradually its thorned tentacle slash combo as the battle progresses. The ultimate combo is: moving its resting tentacles (to make Link's capture of the thorns to hurt it more difficult) while it shoots three series of goo drops, attacking with its left upper tentacle, then with the right one, and finally with both.

* In ''[[Angband]]'', Ancient Multi-Hued Dragons and Drolems are notorious for killing players who descend to 2500' without poison resistance. Players without it will take 800 HP of damage from a single breath.

* Agility in [[Pokémon Mystery Dungeon]], especially in Monster Houses. Doubles the speed of every enemy in the room, giving them more than enough time to wreck your party without you being able to counterattack. If it's used twice? Quadruple speed.

** The Grudge Trap is That One Trap. Trip it, and every Pokemon on the floor is warped to where you are and given the Grudge status. In other words, when they go down, it drains the PP of the move you used to finish them to 0. Unless you have Warp Orbs/Seeds or Max Elixirs, you will die very quickly.

 

 

== Non-Video Games ==

* ''[[Magic the Gathering]]'' has a whole "restricted list" in Vintage and a "banned list" in other formats. Every last one of those could be [[That One Attack]]. Three cards even annoy the judges so much that they're banned in Vintage: Shahrazad<ref>Creates a game within the game</ref>, Chaos Orb, and Falling Star. There are other Vintage-banned cards, but they use ante, a mechanic involving changing ownership, something never done in tournaments.

* The ''[[Yu-Gi-Oh (Tabletop Game)|Yu-Gi-Oh]]'' Trading Card Game has several, but the effect of "Chaos Emperor Dragon-- Envoy of the End" takes the cake. For 1000 Life Points, the player can send ''every card'' on both sides of the field '''and''' in both players' hands to the Graveyard, inflicting 300 points of damage ''per card''! [[Game Breaker|You can see why the Chaos Dragon was quickly banned from competitive play]]. "Cemetery Bomb" has a similar effect, though not as devastating: It does 100 damage to your opponents' life points for every card in their Graveyard.

[[Category:YMMV Trope]]

[[Category:That One Attack]]